How big is your progress?
Ingenuism Weekly 9
“Adding more people causes problems. But people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge; the brakes are our lack of imagination and unsound social regulations of these activities. The ultimate resource is people—especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefits, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.” –Julian Simon, The State of Humanity
INSIGHT
How big is your progress?
Don Watkins and Robert Hendershott
If you wanted to understand what factors encouraged plant growth, you could perform some simple experiments. You could raise some plants in a controlled environment and vary the conditions one at a time. How much did CO2 levels impact plant growth? How much did water impact plant growth? How much did different fertilizers impact plant growth? Measuring the plants would be the easy part. You’d just break out a yard stick.
But what if you wanted to measure economic growth so you could discover what factors contributed to progress? That’s a far greater challenge. Not only because so many more potential factors are involved. Not only because you can’t do controlled experiments on entire societies of human beings. But also because there is no yard stick for measuring economic growth.
The most common way we measure growth is with inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. GDP tries to identify the market value of all the goods and services a nation produces in a given timespan. GDP per capita just takes that value and divides it by population.
The virtue of the metric is its simplicity—a single number we can use to compare prosperity across time and space. But that simplicity masks enormous complexity.
Consider this. The real price of a TV (inflation adjusted) has gone down by 99.14% since 1950. The quality, meanwhile, has gone up dramatically. Instead of black and white, we have high-definition color. Instead of huge boxes with small screens we have giant flatscreens mounted to our walls. Instead of watching three networks, we can watch anything we want, whenever we want. Instead of a tin can speaker, we get surround sound that rivals a movie theater. Economists try to adjust for these qualitative changes. But…come on. And much of what we consume today is effectively free! How do you adjust for that?
Progress is about human well-being. We’re trying to assess whether people’s lives are getting better. But GDP per capita and similar metrics measure the prices we pay for things, not the benefit we receive. In a world where things are rapidly improving and much of what we buy is now cheap or free, any correlation between GDP and quality of life breaks down. GDP per capita is like a broken heart monitor, telling us we’re on death’s door as we relax comfortably in our bed, healthy and energized.
To assess progress, we would need a full account of our standard of living, including things like:
Health and longevity. It makes a huge difference to our well-being whether we’re living short, painful, debilitated lives—or whether our lives are long, healthy, and vibrant.
The kind of work we do. It makes a huge difference to our well-being whether we’re stuck doing back-breaking physical labor; or monotonous factory work; or work that’s fun, challenging, and interesting.
How we allocate our time. It makes a huge difference to our well-being whether we have to work 12-hour days, six days a week to meet our basic needs, or whether we have space for leisure, creativity, and nurturing relationships.
Connection. It makes a huge difference to our well-being whether we’re confined to a small village or able to jet across the globe to meet a business partner or attend a friend’s wedding (and to say goodnight to our children via Zoom while we’re away).
Knowledge. It makes a huge difference to our well-being whether our knowledge is confined to the local rumor mill—or whether we can access all of humanity’s knowledge at the push of a button.
To grasp the enormity of the progress we’ve seen so far, we cannot look at any single number. Instead, we need to think about a wholistic picture where billions of people now live to eighty and beyond, doing work that’s relatively safe and fulfilling, with plenty of time to pursue their values and invent their future. We need to think about the difference between a world where the wealthy few could listen to a symphony once a week, play croquet, and get their hands on the occasional book—and a world where almost everyone can experience great art and music with a few taps on their phone, where millions of books are available for a few dollars, and where we can explore limitless ideas and pursue limitless hobbies.
The point is not that quantitative measures of progress are useless. GDP per capita and real wages and longevity metrics are all part of the picture of human well-being. They can all help us gain a sense of people’s standard of living and how it has changed over time. But to understand the causes of progress, slicing and dicing statistics will only take us so far.
The alternative to measuring progress through outputs is to focus on the inputs. Human flourishing depends on human ingenuity creating opportunity and solving problems. Ingenuity is the source of economic growth, rising life expectancy, and enhanced quality of life in general.
The most important question we can ask is: what are the conditions that foster human ingenuity and maximize its impact—and what are the conditions that hold it back? Knowing that, we can trust that ingenuity unleashed will create progress in all of its forms. That is the methodology that underlies Ingenuism.
QUICK TAKES
Die, diabetes
Nearly half of diabetics report having initially refused life-saving insulin therapy, often because they fear the needle injections. Now it looks like we’re headed for a pill that can deliver insulin.
The hormone needs to reach their bloodstream, so any oral insulin system needs to be able to prevent the breakdown of the insulin until it can pass through the stomach and then cross the walls of the intestines. It also needs to be safe for prolonged use, as many people with diabetes will be needing insulin for the rest of their lives.
The new oral insulin system appears to meet both of those requirements.
Meanwhile, Swedish researchers are making progress on a vaccine to help Type 1 diabetics.
A team from Linköping University finds injecting the protein GAD (or glutamic acid decarboxylase) into a patient’s lymph nodes effectively preserves their ability to produce insulin. In patients with type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system starts attacking the cells which make insulin. Once all of these cells are destroyed, the body is no longer able to regulate its blood sugar levels.
Having watched my grandmother suffer from diabetes for decades, all I can say is: faster, please!
The COVID-19 vaccines are amazing…and getting better
One of the challenges involved in distributing the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was that they couldn’t be stored in a conventional refrigerator for very long. That’s no longer going to be a hurdle. The FDA has now said Pfizer’s vaccine can be stored in conventional refrigerators for a month. (Moderna already received similar permission.)
Experts said the Pfizer vaccine will now have better local access, with greater flexibility for walk-in appointments and primary care access to vaccine supply. Meanwhile, there will be less concern about the vaccines going to waste. And for adolescents and teens -- who now comprise more than a quarter of reported daily vaccinations -- the simplification in storage requirements brings further opportunities to vaccinate in pediatrician offices and school settings.
That’s great news. But you know what would be even better? If the 90% effective mRNA vaccines were even more effective, and if they didn’t have to be stored in a refrigerator at all, and while we’re dreaming, wouldn’t it be great if they only required one shot instead of two?
Yeah, Big Pharma is making that happen.
Some shots will be more effective against certain variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Others aim to cover several types of severe respiratory viruses, including the first SARS, which caused outbreaks from 2002 to 2004, or even all viruses in the larger coronavirus family.
Companies are testing vaccines that won't need to be kept cold, won't require two shots, will have fewer side effects, can be produced more efficiently and can be delivered without needles to make them easier to provide in rural areas and the developing world.
I find it astonishing that we give giant victory parades for sports teams, but not for the people who are ending a pandemic and saving millions of lives.
I once was blind, but now I see
A new gene therapy has successfully partially restored a blind man’s vision.
The 58-year-old man has a genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which causes light-gathering cells in the retina to die. Before the treatment, known as optogenetic therapy, the man could detect some light but couldn’t see motion or pick out objects. Now he can see and count objects and even reported being able to see the white stripes of a pedestrian crosswalk, researchers report May 24 in Nature Medicine. His vision is still limited and requires him to wear special goggles that send pulses of light to the treated eye. . . .
Researchers have been working for more than a decade on optogenetic therapies to restore vision to people with degenerative eye diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa (SN: 5/15/15). The therapy involves using a light-sensitive protein to make nerve cells fire off a signal to the brain when hit with a certain wavelength of light.
Still a long way to go to cure blindness—but the goal is in sight.
The risks of innovation
One of the main areas where I’m more cautious about innovation is when technology intersects with law enforcement. Some advances have been incredibly positive, such as the ability of DNA to identify the guilty and exonerate the innocent. But then there are cases like these.
Vice tells the bonkers story of a how Citizen, a crime tracking app, promoted a vigilante-like manhunt for a suspected arsonist. The company went so far as to offer users a $30,000 bounty if they had information that led the suspect’s capture (which, the company hoped, would happen live on its app). Only it turned out the person the app publicized was innocent.
The Verge, meanwhile, describes how Chicago police use an algorithm to predict shootings, which led them to show up at Robert McDaniel’s house and explain that “McDaniel would be involved in a shooting. That he would be a ‘party to violence,’ but it wasn’t clear what side of the barrel he might be on. He could be the shooter, he might get shot. They didn’t know. But the data said he was at risk either way.” McDaniel was warned, he was now on their so-called heat list: “from here on out, the Chicago Police Department would be watching him.”
They did. The results?
McDaniel found himself in a kind of worst-case scenario: police were distrustful of him because of the heat list, while his neighbors and friends were distrustful of him because they assumed he was cooperating with law enforcement — no amount of assurances would convince them he wasn’t.
McDaniel became isolated. Friends stopped talking to him.
Twenty years ago, this was science fiction (remember Minority Report?). Today it is becoming reality. Law enforcement technologies with the presumption of guilt carry special risks. We do not want cops to “move fast and break things.”
Connection: The High School Years
Gen Z is using our modern tools of connection to help achieve their education goals. The Study Web is an informal universe of students spread over a variety of social networks—YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Discord, Twitter—to help them improve their grades…and cope with the anxiety, pressure, and self-doubt school often provokes.
Some Study Web influencers provide tips, some offer motivation and encouragement, and others are geared toward emotional support and companionship. For example:
[T]here’s a genre of Study Web videos that provide a parasocial pairing: “Study With Me” or “Gongbang” as they’re called in South Korea, where they’re also quite popular. Often streamed live on YouTube or Twitch, creators sit at their desks and study, the idea being that fellow students watching will open up their textbooks and laptops to study alongside them. These videos simulate the feeling of being in a coffee shop or studying at the library, while also motivating students to focus for extended periods of time.
Maybe most surprising is how students have turned TikTok, with its one-minute limit on videos, into a source of educational fuel.
Under the hashtag #StudyTok, you’ll find TikTok creators—ambitious students, recent graduates, and productive professionals—trade tips on finding focus (lo-fi music, of course), highlight the best strategy for note-taking (Cornell Method), share their favorite enterprise business app (Notion), and suggest tools to make studying more aesthetic (a pink or green keyboard with rounded caps).
It’s all super-cool. But you still couldn’t pay me enough go back to school.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero by Tyler Cowen
Most people don’t appreciate progress. But even fewer appreciate the main vehicle for progress: business. And almost no one appreciates the companies that drive the vast majority of progress: big business. Economist Tyler Cowen wants to change that.
Cowen isn’t an apologist for big business. Indeed, he goes out of his way to acknowledge the failures and shortcomings of business. (Sometimes I think he concedes too much.) What he draws our attention to is the way our assessments of big business are typically biased: we don’t take into account the major positives of big business—and we often exaggerate the negatives.
On the positives he writes:
All of the criticism one might mount against the corporate form—some of which are valid—pale in contrast to two straightforward and indeed essential virtues. First, business makes most of the stuff we enjoy and consume. Second, business is what gives most us jobs. The two words that follow most immediately from the world of business are “prosperity” and “opportunity.”
As for the negatives, Cowen tackles most of the major contemporary charges against big business, including the claims that CEOs are paid too much, that it’s monopolistic, that Wall Street is useless, and that big business controls the government.
Particularly relevant to today’s debate is his chapter, “Are the Big Tech Companies Evil?” Cowen dispenses with all of the typical criticisms.
Are big tech companies monopolies? “Many of these ‘monopolists,’ if that is even the right word, charge either nothing or much lower fees than their pre-internet counterparts.”
Are big tech companies stifling innovation? “[I]n practice the major tech companies have proven to be vigorous innovators. Furthermore, the prospect of being bought up by Google or one of the other tech giants has boosted the incentive for other tech giants to innovate, and it has given struggling companies access to capital and expertise when they otherwise might have folded or never started in the first place.”
Are big tech companies censoring controversial ideas? “To the extent that censorship has arisen as an issue, it is because the public and some politicians have demanded a response (with tech company employees exercising some pressure as well). So maybe our beef should be with the intrinsic difficulty of the problem, and not with the tech companies per se.”
Cowen has much more of value to say on these and other criticisms of big business. At every turn, however, his methodology is the same: dispense with the biased assumption that business is bad and then look carefully at the positives and the negatives.
Cowen’s weakest chapter comes at the end, when he seeks to make sense of why business is so disliked. Cowen thinks the basic problem is that “we cannot help judging business by many of the same standards we apply to people.” Even here, Cowen is rich with useful insights, but I don’t think you can make sense of our negative attitudes toward business without taking into account widespread moral beliefs, which cast suspicion on any form of self-interest. Given that business is driven by the self-interested pursuit of profit, it is inherently suspect.
That aside, Cowen’s book is brave and insightful. You cannot value progress is you don’t value the companies that make progress possible.
Until next time,
Don Watkins
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